Bone Deep

by Sandra Ireland

  Even though Jim is no longer with us, the toolbox remains untouched – a mark, I suppose, of how little anyone cares to come in here now. It sits under the desk, the lid closed on a resourceful, hardworking life. It’s a stout wooden crate, with rope lugs at both ends and a hasp for a padlock which has been missing for as long as I can remember. I grab the rope handle and haul the thing out into the light. The lid is sticky with layer upon layer of oil and grease and dust; that accumulated black grime that finds its way into the lines of a workman’s hands.

  My own hands are shaking a little as I ease open the lid. The tools within have settled into a pattern, generation upon generation of awls and chisels and drill bits. It seems a sacrilege to disturb them, as if I’m breaking the seal on something that might be better left undisturbed. Nonetheless, I deliberate over them like a surgeon, selecting, testing, replacing, choosing afresh – junior hacksaw, claw hammer, pliers, tin snips. There is a delicious irony in this, the using of Jim’s tools to dispose of Anna Madigan. Bones become calcified after burning. They go white and crumble. I scissor a pair of secateurs in my hand. Sometimes the process needs a little outside help.

  Once I divert the water to the wheel, the machinery rapidly gets up to speed and the millstones gallop around at a rate of knots. The bump and rattle of the stones excites me, which hasn’t happened for a very long time. Since Jim, my sorties here have been brief and craven. Today I feel like I’m taking my power back.

  In the night, as my bonfire took hold, I nipped along to the pond with my flashlight and spanner to make sure the sluice was open enough to allow the water to surge forth. I became disorientated on the way back, the world flitting by in the torch beam like a magic lantern show: white stones and silver water; leaves beaded with jewels; black frames and fissures and shadows that made no sense. It was easy to imagine myself not an historian but an alchemist, the elements at my fingertips – water and fire and the cool, midnight earth. The air was spiked with something raw and magical. It was easy to imagine things floating downstream: white fingers, hair like waterweed. Sodden yellow silk. The miller striding ahead of me in the dark. In the bushes the goldfinches flexed their sleepy wings, thrip thrip thrip, and the breeze wept. Every story I had ever learned was about to be distilled into something significant.

  I decide to use the first pair of millstones. These are the shelling stones, quarried from solid sandstone and used for breaking the husk from the whole oats. There is a hard, rough edge to them that suits my purpose. The second pair, the millstones proper, are more refined, intended for producing a fine-grade, civilised meal. Long, long ago, the shelling stones would have been the only stones available, and I suspect that this was what would have been used in the bone mills of old.

  I begin to chant as I snip up Anna Madigan’s skull and feed it into the eye of the stone.

  ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a red-haired woman! Be she alive or be she dead – I’ll grind her bones to make my bread!’

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Too late I realise that Lucie is standing behind me.

  No sooner has she spoken the words than she doubles up in pain, sinks to her knees on the dusty floor. I had quite forgotten her predicament.

  ‘Get an ambulance!’ she gasps. ‘This fucking baby is coming!’

  ‘Oh dear, dear. Let me get you comfortable.’ Hastily I drag some sacks from a pile in the corner and try to pack them under her, as you would a pony that’s slipped in its stall. She slaps me away.

  ‘Get help!’

  ‘I will. I will!’ I sigh at this interruption. Anna Madigan lies crumbled in a tin pail at my feet. I’m so near to closure. The girl is moaning through gritted teeth. ‘Tell me. The baby . . . is it Arthur’s?’

  She sucks in a breath, glares at me. Her eyes are on fire. ‘Does it matter? If I had the father now I’d cut off his dick.’

  My mouth gives a prim little twitch. ‘No need for that. I was only asking.’

  The moaning is very distracting, so I can’t quite follow my thoughts. Dogs whelp in stoical silence and all this humanity is too much. Lucie’s voice turns wheedling.

  ‘Please, Mac. My phone – I left it in my bedroom. Please could you bring it to me?’ Sweat glistens on her upper lip. Her cheeks are as red as poppies.

  ‘Of course.’ I head for the door.

  ‘Ring for the ambulance,’ she calls after me. ‘And Arthur. Please call Arthur. He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I don’t look back. Phone Arthur? To help with another man’s baby? The minx. We’ll see about that.

  I find the phone easily enough. It’s lying on the bedroom carpet, as if it’s been dropped in a tremendous hurry. It seems to be none the worse for its ordeal, and everything lights up when I press random buttons. I have a mobile phone, which I rarely use. It infuriates Arthur no end when I turn it off and slip it into my sock drawer. What’s the point in that? You should take it with you at all times, in case of an emergency. I tut in the phone’s direction. Yes, Lucie – you should have your phone with you at all times, in case of an emergency. The display has a bar across it with Reuben’s name, large as life. There seem to have been a lot of missed calls and my clumsy swiping makes an unopened message pop up. It’s a rather terse reply from the man himself.

  What? Why tell me now and not 9 months ago? Jesus. I’m in fckin Amsterdam. Call me.

  So this is Reuben’s reply. Oh dear. Clutching the phone, I wander through to the kitchen. The truth seems to have been withheld from those who should rightly know. I feel cold inside when I think of Arthur. He’s been taken in by a floozy, just as his father was. Are we doomed to repeat mistakes across the generations? I swore I wouldn’t let him be hurt like I was. No, it must end here. That girl cannot be allowed to foist her illegitimate child onto my son.

  I wonder if the sister, Jane, ever found Lucie’s poem. Reuben never spotted me posting it through the window of his car. I hope she found it. Someone had to do something, and I’m the only one in possession of all the facts. I imagine the betrayed sister discovering the poem, examining the handwriting. Putting two and two together. You don’t want to believe an unpalatable truth, that’s the problem, and when you do find out . . . the truth is like a cancer, impossible to dig out. The more you come to know, the more the pain spreads.

  I find myself looking down at the phone. Something is hovering at the edges of my mind. There’s a call I really should make. It has something to do with Lucie, and, oddly, with Arthur, but I just can’t quite make the connection. Ah well. I slip the phone into my cardigan pocket and head back to the mill.

  Lucie

  My head is full of calculations. I try to work out the distance between the hospital and the mill; the ETA of the ambulance; the number of steps it will take Arthur to get to my side. I count breaths. I count the space between breaths. My body is consumed with effort. The pressure in my lower back is immense; this baby is threatening to cleave me in two. I’m feverishly picturing my spine as a long bow, drawn back, each vertebrae a hair’s breadth from piercing my skin. I can see the polished white arch of my own backbone bursting from my body, my hair, lank with sweat, strung across it, taut and keening. Thrip thrip thrip . . . help me help me help me . . . Anguished wailing shudders through the mill, but I’m no longer sure whether it’s harp music or the sound of my own voice.

  I throw my head back, my face screwed up tightly with the pain. When the wave subsides and I open my eyes, I see the silvery writing on the old timbers by the millstones. From here, I can’t make out the words strewn across it, or the childish flower, but I remember what it says: 4 firlots, 2 pecks of barley, a quarter pound of nails. A name, etched in silver, flickers in and out of my line of vision. Bella. The name fights to be understood, and in the space between one pain and the next, it all becomes clear. Bella, standing on this spot, bargaining with the miller. Her name is a promise, a pact. Make it stop. A plea. Make it stop. Make it stop. I understand her desperation, the endless, g
rinding guilt. Carving her name into the wood like that. What did she sign away to him? Anything to stop the unstoppable voice of the bone harp.

  Another contraction makes me suck in my breath. The grumbling of the millstones is making my head hurt. Where the hell is Mac? Where is the ambulance? I strain to hear an engine noise, or the wail of a siren, but the constant rumble blots out everything. I sit up, attempt to knead the pain from my back. As I shift position I kick the tin pail I’d seen Mac with earlier. A little puff of smoky ash rises into the air, and it distracts me for a moment. I nudge the bucket again with the toe of my welly, and a charred, bonfire stink rises up to meet me. The contents are white and flaky; broken, brittle shards that seem familiar, but I can’t make sense of what I’m looking at.

  Fresh agony seizes me, and I sink back onto the grubby sacks. The pain has altered; I feel an out-of-control urge to push this baby out. Shit. I hadn’t read that part of the NHS website. I struggle out of my wellies. My thighs are wet and my questing fingers come away scarlet. I’m not sure if this is how things should be. I’m weeping now, just as Bella must have been weeping as she carved her name on the timber, as she sold her soul.

  I’ll do anything, just make it stop.

  I feel so alone. The mill is cold, impassive. As I lie on the floor, my body labouring to expel the baby, the walls fade to black. The miller is gathering strength, taking shape in the corners, in the hidden parts of the place. An awful clamouring cold descends, and I’m trapped. I can no longer visualise the time beyond this. I’m vaguely aware of a shadow passing across the open doorway behind me. Mac has returned.

  I open my eyes. I’m not sure how long I’ve been out of it. Everything feels unfamiliar. The memory of a sharp, smarting agony is still fresh between my legs and the sacking is wet. I move, tentatively, probingly. Everything is fuzzy, but I recall Mac’s cold hands touching my belly, her calling my name, my own low animal moan, and a slow, slithering end to the pain. After that there is only blackness. I must have sunk down into my own exhaustion, overcome with the most delicious relief. I’m burning up but I can’t stop shaking. My mouth is parched and sour. I need a drink but my teeth are chattering so hard I can’t even speak.

  I’m missing something here. The silence is deathly. There’s no sign of Mac, and the millstones have stopped. With growing horror, I gather up what’s left of my energy and shout into the emptiness of the mill.

  ‘Mac! Where are you? Where is my baby?’

  Her head appears at the top of the basement stairs. I’m still drifting in and out of whatever place I’m in. I cannot get warm. I cannot get up. My breasts are hard and tingling, waiting for a cry that hasn’t come. I should have a baby in my arms by now. I sniff the air like an animal; it smells of blood and birth. I hear a snatch of that weird little song Mac was singing around the bonfire.

  ‘Mac! What have you done with my baby?’

  She completes the climb, slowly, like an old woman, and comes to stand over me. She’s towering above me, a shadowy figure blocking out the light. She doesn’t speak, and for an awful minute I’m not at all certain that this is Mac. It’s someone else; someone I don’t want to know. In my peripheral vision I can see the tin pail. It comes to me now, just what those splinters are. I recognise them now.

  Bone.

  That’s what I saw on the bonfire in the split second before my waters broke. Skeletal fingers reaching out from the flames.

  ‘My baby?’ My voice is weak. The floor is spinning like a kiddies’ roundabout and I’m barely clinging on.

  ‘Lucie.’ The figure crouches down. ‘I’m afraid . . . Oh dear.’ She takes a shaky breath. ‘You had a little boy, but I’m afraid he – he wasn’t breathing.’

  I struggle to sit up. I want to jump to my feet and slap her, but I’m so weak. I feel hollowed out. ‘I want my baby! What have you done with him?’

  ‘Don’t shout at me like that, Lucie.’ Her voice is patronising, like she’s talking to a cross child. ‘I thought it best that you don’t see him until . . .’

  ‘I want to see him! I want my baby!’

  ‘. . . until the paramedics get here and . . .’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you even called the ambulance! Where’s my phone? You’re fucking crazy.’

  ‘I don’t have your phone, Lucie.’

  ‘Right.’ I roll unsteadily to my knees. Something slips inside me. The sacking is sodden with blood – my knees, my calves, my feet are red. They don’t look like my legs.

  Mac moves quickly, shushing me, trying to get me to keep still. I fall back, panting. ‘Just relax. I think you may be haemorrhaging.’

  She is so calm. She’s so fucking calm, rolling up my bath towels from the cottage and packing them between my thighs. I’m sobbing now, wild with grief and fear.

  ‘Do you want me to die too? Is that it? I know what you were burning on that bonfire!’

  ‘Stop it now. Stop it,’ says Mac. She tries to grasp my hand, but I don’t want her anywhere near me. ‘You don’t know what I’ve been through, Lucie. Jim and Anna Madigan – they betrayed me. It’s not something you can ever get over. And the grief . . . it stays with you. It grows into something else. You don’t understand, Lucie, because you’re on the other side. You’re the other woman. You’ll never understand what we’ve been through, Jane and I. How our hearts have been ground up so you can get what you want. Anna Madigan had the nerve to turn up here and beg for forgiveness. The guilt was eating away at her, you see, and it will do the same to you. I did her a kindness, really, because I made it stop.’

  I understand now. I understand whose bones are in that bucket.

  Mac

  There’s a back door in the basement. It has five locks: three bolts, a long iron hook and a big old-fashioned deadlock. Jim used to leave it open when he was milling, to keep the flour dust at bay, but it hasn’t been opened for years. To the left is the window where we have the bluebottle problem. It has a wide stone sill, although I’ve never figured out why such a feature was necessary. It seems more suited to a dairy perhaps – a place to leave your cream to settle, or your cheese to ripen. I have used it in the past as a convenient ledge on which to store my home-grown onions or bunches of herbs. Lately, it’s put me in mind of an altar; a space where you might leave votive candles, or an offering of some kind.

  Today, I place the baby on the ledge.

  Having arrived in the world so unexpectedly, the baby had appeared stunned. And, even allowing for the coating of blood and gunge, it was not a good colour. It never uttered a cry. I knew that this was a bad sign. I’d brought some towels from the cottage and I rubbed its black hair and its blue limbs. I swaddled it in a soft peach-coloured bath towel. Then, I took it down to the basement and laid it on the cold stone ledge.

  I begin to sing as I climb back up the stairs. It seems fitting somehow. Just a few bars of an old tune that’s been humming round my head since last night. It’s the ‘Lyke-Wake Dirge’, an old country charm once chanted around a coffin. The old belief is that a departing soul must first traverse the Bridge of Dread, a link between worlds where your fate can go either way. Any misstep will see you tumble into the fiery abyss beneath the bridge, where the miller is waiting. It seems a fitting lullaby.

  From Whinny-muir when thou mayst passe,

  Every night and alle;

  To Brigg o’ Dread thou comest at laste;

  And Christe receive thye saule.

  If ever thou gavest meat or drink,

  Every night and alle;

  The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;

  And Christe receive thye saule.

  This ae nighte, this ae nighte.

  Every night and alle;

  Fire and sleete, and candle lighte,

  And Christe receive thye saule.

  Lucie is distraught, of course. But I feel divorced from it all, as if the blood, the weeping, all this drama is happening on the telly and I’m just an observer. Reality is that tin bucket and
its contents. I have to mill the rest of those remains, grind them to powder, or things will go very badly for me. I should have done it years ago, and now the girl has complicated things, bringing her own story into the mix. I really don’t need this interruption. Not now. I still have so much to do. I long to finish my task, but something tells me the moment is gone.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll tell you the rest of the story, while we’re waiting. Did you read the last bit, about the miller making the bone harp out of Elspeth’s corpse? Yes?’ Lucie’s eyes have closed. The lids are flickering, as if she’s dreaming. I suppose she’s exhausted – who wouldn’t be? Perhaps the story will soothe her while we wait, although I’m no longer sure what we’re waiting for. ‘Yes, it’s quite fitting to tell the story here, beside the place where Bella carved her name. I’ve always wanted to be a proper storyteller, Lucie. I once wanted to hold sessions here, in the mill. How atmospheric to tell the sisters’ story here, where they are just a few layers away from us. Are you listening, Lucie?’

  There is no response from the ground, although the girl’s limbs are shaking. I bring an old travelling rug from the office and drape it over her, wrinkling my nose at the smell of birth. There’s no dignity in delivery or death. Life is a messy business. As I step back, the silvery writing catches my eye.

  ‘She had to come here, to bargain with the miller, Lucie. You see, the harp wouldn’t stop, not for anything. It would not stop its accusations. Her sister’s voice was always in her head, accusing her, day and night, and she thought the miller could make it stop. The miller is always waiting to help us. We only have to ask. But the price is steep. Bella bargained her soul for silence. I don’t suppose that went well for her.’ I run a tender finger over the inscription. Bella. ‘The miller is here with us right now.’